


Sorrow and Sun

by darklittlestory



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dark Fairy Tale, Fairy/Monster/Ividja Loki, Hint of Celtic Mythology, M/M, Monsterfucking but make it pretty, Use of Angrboda as kenning/title not character, Very very loose Norse Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:20:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27025711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darklittlestory/pseuds/darklittlestory
Summary: There is a very small village near a very large, very old forest—the Ironwood. The wood is full of secret dangers, and it is home to a creature the villagers call the Angrboda, the Sorrow Bringer.In the little village, there lives a young beekeeper and farmer named Thor. He is bright and sunny and laughs with his friends and lives happily with his mother and father in their small cottage in their small world.But Thor is daring, and he is curious. He sometimes walks beyond the outskirts of the village. And one moonlit night, he sees a luminous pair of green eyes watching him from the Ironwood.Thor tries not to return, but he is drawn to the forest. He leaves gifts for the strange creature, and he learns its name—Loki. Thor is enchanted by his odd beauty, by the bright green eyes, the dark tangle of raven hair, and the changeable skin that is creamy pale in the dark but in the sun shifts to leafy patterns and nearly disappears.When Thor can no longer resist Loki’s allure, he finds he must pay a steep price to be with his eerie beloved.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 90
Collections: Thorki Baby Bang 2020





	Sorrow and Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so very much to [Rai](https://twitter.com/sendaraven) and [Elsa](https://twitter.com/spreadtheashes) for steering this lovely BabyBang boat and for being so supportive while I dealt with a family crisis during writing and editing.
> 
> EPIC thanks to [Opalyzed](https://twitter.com/opalyzed) for [this gorgeous art.](https://twitter.com/opalyzed/status/1317107715039059970) I absolutely adore it. Go show her Twitter lots of love!
> 
> Thank you as ever to [Raven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight) for beta work, cheerleading, and supportive friendship. Follow her on Twitter [here.](https://twitter.com/thunderingraven)

##  **Prologue.**

There is a very old village near an even older wood. The forest is thick, lush, and dark, and stretches for a vast expanse not yet charted. Few who explore it ever return, and those who do speak little sense, talking of things familiar only from half-remembered myths older than the grandmothers of the grandmothers of those shaken and confused travelers.

The wood is so full with trees and vines it is dark as wrought iron even in the daytime, and long ago, before living memory, it was named the Ironwood.

Abutting this wood is a small village. Long ago it was called Asgard, ‘enclosure of the gods,’ though none live now who could say why. Perhaps the folk who built the village once mingled with the gods themselves, or imagined that they did.

For the deep, dark wood inspires such fantasies.

But over time such fanciful ideas were tempered, and now the village is called Innangard, a word in the townspeople’s tongue that means ‘within the fence.’ And once there was a real fence. Now, only thick stone pillars remain, tumbled and worn. The wooden rails that once connected them have long since fallen and returned to feed the earth, but the pillars still mark the borders of the village in a tidy square. 

The youth of the village are taught never to wander beyond the stones. 

There are carvings in the rock—swirling, weaving patterns and remnants of runic script that are all but illegible now. The etchings once cut crisp and deep but time has worn the surface nearly smooth, leaving only hints of whatever secrets they used to tell.

All children of the world are brought up on fairy stories and dark tales of creatures lurking at the edges of their lives to punish young ones for stepping off the righteous path. In the village of Innangard, those stories have the taste of history and real tragedy. The children sense it in the darting eyes of their mothers when they tell the stories and the way their fathers grip their small hands too tightly when they walk close to the boundary with the Ironwood.

The tale-spinners whisper of a dread creature within the forest: the _Angrboda,_ the Sorrow Bringer. The stories are old, and none can say what, if anything, remains of fact in their retelling, but the legend is full of odd and forbidden things. 

Some say a woman once lay with a dire wolf and from that terrible union sprang the Angrboda. Other stories say the Angrboda is a man, handsome and wild, and that he eats the flesh of mortals in his animal form. 

Some say the creature is a troll, giant, a tree-sprite, an evil fairy. 

Mostly, the villagers agree it is an _ividja_ , a wood-wife. That it is part of the forest itself, as dark and mysterious. Certainly the tales of the Sorrow Bringer are as shadowed as that thick forest.

The oldest grannies of the village whisper that their own grannies used to leave little presents for the ividja. That so long as it was placated with sweets and treats the village was safe as houses, and the children could dare each other to dash into the forest and return with berries staining their fingers to prove their mettle.

No one now living knows much about the ividja, but they belong to the shady, green parts of the world, and if they are the wives of the forests, then the Angrboda is wedded to the Ironwood.

* * *

##  **One.**

Thor’s ax cuts a silver half moon in the air and lands with a thunderclap as he chops into hard elmwood. The tree was felled by a storm and Freyr, his uncle, wants the wood for carving. Thor is the strongest woodcutter in the village, so he is here to make manageable pieces of the unwieldy trunk.

It is tough work but Thor enjoys it, warmed by the summer sun on his bare shoulders and the burn in his muscles. He makes a steady rhythm: Swoosh-swing, crack-chop. Swoosh-swing, crack-chop. When the sun passes its zenith and begins to mellow into a buttery afternoon gold, he loads the blocks of elm into his wheelbarrow. The job finished, he pulls his tunic over his broad shoulders and shakes his long golden hair loose from its braid and wheels his load to the side of Freyr’s cottage, stacking it into a neat pile.

Freyr thanks him with a mug of cool ale, and they settle on Freyr’s porch, watching as the sun sinks lower still. Thor chats about the farm and his bees while Freyr whittles at a small piece of wood.

He’s carving a doll for his daughter, Thor’s niece Asta. Like all of Freyr’s work, it’s beautifully made. Thor loves this about his uncle. Most of the village children’s toys are simple things, and while that is fine enough —the children’s minds are rich and they make wonderful stories with their rough dolls and game pieces—Thor is proud that Asta and her brother Arvid have tiny art pieces.

This new doll is an intricately wrought figure with arms and legs that move elegantly. Its face is lovely in a queer way.

“What is it?” Thor asks, intrigued. The figure is… odd. It seems to be neither a man nor woman, nor even quite human. There’s something in the lithe limbs and sly tilt of the head, the huge eyes that make it something more.

“An ividja, _min kjære._ ” Freyr tells him.

“It’s… beautiful. Strange, if you don’t mind my saying,” Thor admits.

Freyr smiles his twinkling smile. “It is supposed to be strange. The ividjur are strange folk.”

“Uncle! You speak as though they are real,” Thor says, half chiding and half teasing.

Freyr just says, “Mm,” and looks so much like his twin Frigga, Thor’s mother, that Thor laughs into the remains of his ale.

They sit in silence until the sky turns a deep, satiny blue. The wishing star appears and Freyr points at it with his sharp carving knife. 

“The children will be wanting their stories soon,” Freyr says. 

Arvid and Asta know to watch the sky for the first star. Then they are allowed to come and beg stories of Freyr. They adore their father. They’re twins, too, and they have no mother, so Freyr is a busy parent. By day, they follow him like little ducklings as he carries out his work, their curls and cherub faces bouncing along behind him. In the evenings they settle indoors with their books and their lovely toys and build a world between the two of them as their father works in solitude on the porch.

Thor doesn’t know what happened to the children’s mother. No one ever speaks of her. As a young boy, he had asked Frigga where the children’s mother was and why Uncle Freyr did not have a wife. She had looked very confused, as if she couldn’t remember, and then asked for Thor to go and cut her some rosemary from the garden. After that he hadn’t asked again.

Now, a second star is visible, and the door bursts open. The children call, “Papa! Papa!” and Freyr laughs and scoops them up into his lap. They wind their little arms around his neck and rest their heads against his shoulder. Asta’s curls are dark and glossy like her father’s and Arvid’s are golden, like Thor’s and Frigga’s long waves.

“You’re late. Perhaps you don’t want stories tonight?”

“We do! We do,” Arvid whines. Astrid nods in solemn agreement.

Thor stands to leave and quickly finds himself with a child attached to each leg like clinging vines. He tells them he must go or they will miss their bedtime stories, and points out how many stars have appeared in the dark sky near the sharp crescent moon. Then he lifts them high and kisses their cheeks and hands them over to their father. 

Smiling, Thor hefts his ax over his shoulder and walks toward home with his belly warm with good ale and his mind filled with Freyr’s strange, pretty carving with the suggestion of a dangerous smile cut into its wooden face.

##  **Two.**

Dawn comes and Thor laughs when his eyes open. Tansy and Toothy, his crankiest goats, are staring into his window. They always demand to be milked first, and they’re shuffling and bumping at each other to squeeze in closer to glare at him with their baleful yellow eyes.

He pulls on a tunic and breeches and laces his boots. His mother places two large, steaming mugs of tea into his hands and he kisses her cheek. She sits down to her weaving and tells Thor his father is in the stable.

The goats follow him to the stable, bleating impatiently. Toothy butts into his bottom to hurry him and tea sloshes over the mugs. 

“Asses,” he mutters fondly. 

Thor delivers Odin’s black tea and sips his own, creamy and honeyed, as he sets up a bench and bucket. He relieves Toothy first and then a very put-out Tansy, then tends to the other goats, gathers eggs, and feeds the chickens. He completes his chores by rote, his mind wandering often. 

He isn’t sure why he finds Freyr’s doll so captivating, but the thing has him remembering the stories he heard as a boy, toying with the hem of Frigga’s dress as she worked at her loom and told him the tales she learned from grandfather Fjorgynn.

Dreaming all the while of dark magic and the shadowy wood, Thor finishes work with the animals, and tidies the barn. 

Then he walks up the gentle slope to the hilly part of their tiny farm to check on his bees. The apiary is a project he started himself a few years back, and it’s his pride and joy. He’s got sixty skeps this summer, and he’s built seven box hives so far, hoping to transition his operation fully one day.

He’s perfected smoking the hives, but he hates having to destroy the bees’ homes, and the new box hives are producing a lot more honey. 

He breaks for a meal with his parents and then joins Freyr to help him with cabinetry he’s building at The Bridge, the village’s tavern. That name is a mystery for anyone to guess—there is no body of water near Innangard save the lake that lies opposite the Ironwood, and there has never been a bridge there that anyone can remember.

Heimdall, who owns the tavern, merely shrugs his shoulders and smiles enigmatically when asked.

When the last nail is driven and the wood is oiled and polished to a handsome shine, Freyr packs his tools and shakes hands with Heimdall and claps him on the shoulder. He hugs Thor goodbye and saddles up his horse and trots off to collect the twins from Frigga. 

Thor stays behind to drink a round or three with his friends. Sif, Heimdall’s sister and helper, sneaks away when she can join them. Fandral, the tailor, is making a bawdy joke and she smacks him with a rolled cleaning rag, while Volstagg, the baker and father of nine merry children, roars with laughter. Hogunn, the taciturn blacksmith, merely grunts at their antics. But when Thor catches his eye, he flashes a secret smile. 

The friends retire before it grows too late, knowing the shops and the smithy will need them to be at least somewhat alert in the morning. Sif has gone to check on her real work, the brewing station. She’s a master of ales and meads. The tavern is quiet now, only a few older men sipping strong spirits and singing very old songs quietly together at a corner table.

“Come,” Heimdall says to Thor, his voice rich and deep as he pours another ale and sets it on the bar. He pours another, raising it to his own shapely lips as Thor sits and takes his own.

Thor raises his glass toward his friend, very glad of the invitation. Their companionship is a different thing to what he shares with the others. With Heimdall, Thor has space for quiet and more contemplative conversation. He’s often come to the barman for advice and never regretted it when he has.

Heimdall gives Thor a searching look. “What’s on your mind?” 

The lamps that light the bar flatter him well, and Thor has always found something magical in the way they turn his friend’s amber eyes to flickering, living gold.

Thor shrugs, and though his mind is still full of the stories that gave him shivers as a child, he says, “Nothing at all.” 

Heimdall’s gaze sharpens and he hums thoughtfully, then Sif returns from the back room, and the three of them chat for a while about Thor’s beehives. Thor’s building six frames for the bees this year, and between the skeps and box hives, he’s able to harvest much more through the summer than in past years. He’s excited to see if it will increase his autumn yield as much as he hopes.

That piques Sif’s interest, and she shows him a chart she’s made of her ale and mead recipes and Thor takes a slip of paper noting how much honey she needs to buy for her next batch of mead. 

Tucking the note into his pocket, he bids his friends farewell and starts for home.

*

The children of the village are raised to keep “inside the fence,” and though there’s no longer a proper fence, the expression stayed with the town along with its name.

But it isn’t just the children. Even the adult folk stay inside the boundary of the village. The roads all run within the stone pillars and there is a wide, thoroughly trodden footpath well within its borders.

Occasionally, Thor feels a bit daring, though, and he’s never whispered of it, but he sometimes walks just outside of the fence. Not too near the wood, but close enough he can see in detail the wildness of its vines and trees, the thorny bushes bursting with berries and the riotous brambles that tumble out of the edges of the dense forest.

Tonight, he's in a curious mood. His head is full of stories, his cheeks are warm with drink and excitement, and he can’t resist the allure of walking there. The night is bright with the curved moon and freckled with stars. He skirts the edges of the stones and a black kitten scurries out of his way as he crosses from the village border. It moves like liquid darkness, curling and coiling, and then quick as an arrow it darts into the forest.

Thor strolls the perimeter of the village, ambling northward where home lies, enjoying the night. A balmy breeze carries the scent of pine and honeysuckle and wild lavender. With the moon casting its soft light and the wind stirring the branches, he can see eerie shadows and odd shapes looming and changing as he walks. 

He’s nearing home when a shiver runs through him, his skin pebbling and the hairs on his neck standing straight. He looks all around, but there is only the forest and the border of the village, farther away than he realized. He searches the ground for the kitten, but still sees nothing. 

Feeling a fool, he crosses back into the village, and only there does he lose the feeling that there are eyes on his back.

##  **Three.**

Thor wakes to an aching head and a spinning room. His mother is knocking on his door.

"Yes, Mother, I'm up. I'm coming."

He pulls on his clothes and ties back his hair. He sees his face in the looking glass and grimaces at his puffy eyes. 

Frigga presses a mug of tea into his hand and smirks at him. It smells of mint and some other herb he can't name. He wrinkles his nose but he can’t deny feeling better once it’s in his belly and he’s on his feet.

He kisses her good morning and goes to work. He's slow and sluggish, and when the sun crests the horizon the ache in his head sharpens for a while. 

By noon he’s feeling more himself. After he’s tended to the chickens and goats, he counts jars of honey, checking their seals, and loads Sif's order into crates. 

Odin has their mare Solskinn saddled and brings her to the storage shed near the skeps where her cart is ready to load. He narrows his one eye at Thor and the brow above his patch raises. 

"You returned very late last night." 

"Aye," says Thor. 

"Can you also deliver eggs to Heimdall without breaking them?"

Thor clenches his teeth. He's done this one hundred times if he's done it once. He knows how to nestle eggs into straw.

"Of course, Father. I'll load eggs after the honey."

"No, I'll fetch them," Odin says, and though it's an offer of help he makes it clear he's impatient with Thor's work speed today.

Thor is relieved when he's alone with the sweet mare and the gentle _clomp clomp_ of her shoes on the stones of the road. The village is small and the tavern isn't far. He’s soon unloading his wares. He tucks away his coins and hitches Solskinn to the post. 

He has a late lunch at the bar while Heimdall washes glasses and mugs and hangs them on a rack above him to sparkle with a thousand rainbows above their heads.

Heimdall chuckles and heaps more bacon onto Thor's plate. "Food will set you right."

He lets Thor eat in silence and watches him from the corners of his eyes.

*

Thor rides home along the road that takes him toward Freyr’s cottage, and steers Solskinn off the cobblestone lane to the long dirt path to see his uncle on the outskirts of the village.

The twins are playing loudly in the meadow, running through the grass and taking turns tossing a ball through ornate hoops held on long poles with streamers trailing behind them. They turn and race toward Thor when they notice him and he slows Solskinn to a slow trot so they can race the mare. He lets her into Freyr’s stable and the children feed her timothy hay while he sits with Freyr.

Freyr’s finishing the doll, and when the last rough edges are smoothed, Thor reaches for it. The eyes unnerve him, though, and he hands it back. He considers asking Freyr more about the ividjur, but he suddenly doesn’t want to think about the strange beings, or stories that put him in mind of the Angrboda or the feeling of eyes on his back. They talk of other things, and Thor helps when Freyr starts preparing the evening’s meal.

The children run into the kitchen, hay and dust on their clothes and their hair haloed by the sun streaming in the window. They ask for supper and beg Thor to stay, but he declines. He and Solskinn are very tired, he tells them, and it’s nearly time for horse bedtime stories. They giggle at this and follow him out to say goodbye. Astra asks the mare what her favorite bedtime story is, and tells Thor she likes the ones with giants in them. Arvid says, “No, the ones where she has eight legs and she can run in the sky!”

Thor mounts her, laughing, and steers her toward home.

The night is settling in as the thickening moon rises. He keeps Solskinn just inside the fence, but he feels foolish. Proving to himself that he has nothing to fear, he guides her out into the patch of grassy meadow between the village and the forest, and pretends he isn’t nervous. The night is beautiful, and he’s admiring the stars when he sees his little kitten friend. It stalks a circle around him, then disappears into the dark of the wood.

Shortly before home, Thor has the sense of being watched again. He takes a slow breath, and tells himself it’s the kitten, that it must have been the little cat before, watching him with tiny hidden eyes in the dark. It doesn’t calm him a bit, and when Solskinn’s ears prick up and she raises her head high it gives Thor a cold chill. She’s all right though, just wary. They move on, though he hurries her a little. He turns her back toward the village. Before they cross the fence, he stops with a shock.

A pair of eyes is staring at him. Green and luminous like a cat’s eyes catching light. But they’re of even height with Thor’s and his heart races wildly. They blink, slow and deliberate. Almond-shapes flash then wink out once, twice, then stay wide and bright. 

The eyes are all Thor can make out in the dark. He dares not breathe, and he can't look away. He tells himself it's a wildcat, perhaps, or a wolf. Some ordinary beast, perched high on a rock or branch. He has the feeling the creature is as curious as he is.

Something moves in his periphery and he nearly shouts in fright.

It’s the kitten. When Thor looks back to the forest, the pale green eyes have vanished. 

Shaken, Thor hurries back toward home. He feels foolish but can't deny the sense of safety returning to him when he passes the standing stones.

##  **Four.**

Thor is tasting samples of mead and making notes for Sif while Heimdall keeps his plate full with thickly buttered bread. Heimdall’s ageless eyes fold into smile lines as he teases Thor about looking quite rough the last time he’d sat in the pub.

Thor’s head is clear enough, but seeing those strange eyes in the Ironwood has loosened his tongue and tested his skepticism. He doesn’t feel as foolish as he might have once when he asks, “What do you know about the ividjur, Heimdall? And the Angrboda?"

Heimdall’s face now grows grim. “No one knows much. Whatever truths those stories might have been woven around was lost long before I came here.”

“Truth?” Thor asks, surprised again that the tales he barely recalls from childhood seem to have been taken a bit more seriously than he ever knew.

“All myths grow from a seed of truth,” Heimdall says, his gaze even. 

“What is it, do you suppose? A fairy? A giant come to eat the children who venture to the wood?” Thor laughs.

Heimdall does not. He says, “For my guess, something worse than that.”

He peers into Thor’s eyes, searching. “Do not go into the woods, Thor.”

*

Thor is glad he’s on foot, for the walk to Freyr’s cottage affords him a chance to calm his mind under the light of a setting sun. He relaxes into the calming rhythm of his heavy gait on the paving stones of the street, admiring the stones and shingles of the village square painted golden in the soft light.

He’s tempted into the bakery to help Volstagg polish off a few pastries that might otherwise--or so his friend says with a wink--be stale by tomorrow. On his way out of the village proper, Thor helps a young man called Bucky corral a wayward hen, and spies his companion Stephen silhouetted high on the hill behind the little shack where he’s followed by his adoring sheep. They’re the happiest, sweetest animals Thor knows, and Frigga says they produce the best wool in three counties. The largest ones nearly dwarf little Stephen.

Thor calls out a hello, but in the throng of busy animals, Stephen doesn’t hear him.

The corners of Thor’s mouth are upturned and he’s distracted from his brooding mood. Any worries about unexplained eyes and scary old stories have fled his mind by the time he reaches his uncle’s land.

Bees hum lazily above the buttercups and foxgloves, and he can hear children’s voices ringing across the meadow before he sees the streamers of their favorite hoop and ball game. They’re engrossed, eking out the last of the precious late summer daylight. 

They wave and shriek, “Hello, Thor!” but keep running and tossing the ball. Astra has a hoop high over her head and it’s a bouncing and wobbling target as she runs in wild circles.

Freyr motions Thor to the side of his cottage, calling out, “As long as you’re here...”

Thor takes over hammering in a piece of trim Freyr is stretching up onto his toes to replace. “Can I do anything else to help?”

“Oh, let me think it over while I make us all something to eat. I’ll find some chore to foist off onto you,” Freyr teases. 

They’re walking around to the porch when Astra cries out in alarm.

“Papa! Our ball! We lost our ball! Arvid ran!”

Thor and Freyr run after her, Freyr scooping her into his arms as they go. They can see Arvid heading for the woods, almost at the stone pillar nearest the cottage. 

As his little legs pump, he’s shrieking, “My favorite toy! The monster will take it!” 

Freyr overtakes him and yanks him hard by the arm, which shocks both Arvid and Astra so much they go silent and then begin to wail in unison. Arvid is sobbing that his arm is hurt.

Freyr ushers the children into the cool cottage to soothe them.

Thor, thinking to do his part in calming the distress, walks purposefully into the Ironwood.

##  **Five.**

Thor glances around him, then hurries out of the sun and into the cover of the tree line. 

He spots the ball not far in, caught like a fat golden bug in a web of thorny blackberries. He approaches cautiously and lifts it out, still managing several bloody stings for his trouble. 

He sucks a bead of blood from a finger, then pops a handful of the plump berries into his mouth and lets the sweet-tart juice burst on his tongue to wash away the taste. 

They’re wonderful, and he’s filling his pockets with more of them when something dark catches his eye.

Thor looks back toward the depths of the wood, and there is a figure half-hidden by a silver birch, standing still as a spooked deer. Long, delicate fingers are splayed against the trunk and one large, green eye peers at Thor beneath a tumble of raven colored curls.

What Thor first takes for branches seem to be long, delicate horns or perhaps antlers—it is difficult to tell what is the tree and what is the creature.

Thor stares back in open fascination, the beauty of the thing taking some of the power from the frightening stories of his childhood. The creature (it must be an ividja; Thor has no other name for this) doesn’t move, and so Thor extends his hand palm up toward it, in the placating gesture he uses with a skittish animal.

The creature moves toward Thor very, very slowly. Thor can see it more properly now, and it does seem to be a man, but Thor thinks it _must_ be an ividja _._ For this could well be the model for his uncle’s doll. The big, beautiful eyes and the small mouth and the long long limbs. The only clothing it wears is a small low-slung strip of fur at its hips tied with feathers. Its horns curve up and back in a graceful arc and then branch delicately, the color and texture mimicking the birches.

“Hello,” Thor says, very softly. “I mean you no harm.”

The ividja creeps closer, and a shaft of the low sun falls on its skin. It changes before Thor’s eyes. At first, Thor thinks it is vanishing, but he looks closer and sees that a pattern of leaves and branches has appeared where the sunlight touches. The texture is incredibly realistic, and Thor longs to touch its skin. Where the trees still shade it, the skin is cream-pale and looks as inviting to Thor’s fingers as plush velvet. Where the illusion of the forest is revealed, Thor would swear the skin looks rough as bark and waxy as leaves.

“Come closer,” Thor says. “It’s okay. I only want to see you.”

The ividja makes a sound then, and it’s a noise like the sigh of leaves on a breeze or the rustle of wings taking flight.

It takes a tentative step toward Thor, head cocked like a bird. More of its flesh changes, a twisting vine appearing along an arm that it reaches out toward him. It reminds Thor of the spiraling swirls carved on the stones of the fence pillars and it’s this that shakes him out of a spell.

“I—I must go.”

He runs as fast as he can back toward Freyr’s cottage.

The door is shut, the curtains drawn against the twilight. Thor is dismayed to notice he’s lost the children’s toy in his confusion. He sighs in resignation, and then there comes the ball rolling toward him from beyond the fence. Thor looks toward the wood, but he can see no hint of the shy, mysterious figure.

Still watching the Ironwood for movement, he sets the ball on Freyr’s porch then sets off toward home.

Ahead of him, the ripening moon rises, fat and lustrous. 

##  **Six.**

Thor is awake deep into the night, tangled thoughts bothering him. He can’t reconcile the quiet, beautiful creature in the forest with the fearful way everyone talks of the Sorrow Bringer. It has never seemed to wish Thor any harm, and it returned the children’s toy.

Eventually, Thor’s musings loosen from thoughts to impressions and he drifts to sleep. 

When he wakes, he resolves to leave a little gift by the woods to let his ividja (for that is how he is beginning to think of it) know that Thor caught the ball. Some small gesture of thanks.

At the end of the work day, when supper dishes are washed and stored, Odin and Frigga light lamps and sit together. Odin reads to her while she works at her loom, her deft fingers working the shuttle under and over the warp. 

Thor looks through the house, wondering what sort of gift an ividja might like. Frigga gives him a long look, but says nothing. Finally inspired, Thor takes a jar of honey from the cupboard and shoves it into his pocket, then leaves through the back door of the cottage.

He cuts a bunch of Frigga’s lavender on his way and gathers them into a little bouquet, then makes his way to the edge of the forest. He sets the jar and the flowers on a flat, mossy rock. 

Looking around, he doesn’t see any lambent green eyes or long pale limbs or black curling hair. Trying not to be disappointed, he looks out at the stretch of clearing between the Ironwood and the not-fence, and seeing no one, returns home. 

“Out for a stroll?” Frigga asks when he quietly sets the latch in the door. He flinches; she startled him and he’s anxious anyway. 

“Oh! Yes, getting some air.”

“Mm,” his mother says. “Be careful out in the night, Thor. Please.”

He frowns. She isn’t one to worry so over her grown son. He pulls her into a hug. “Of course, Mother. Always.”

She smiles at him, a little sadly. “Goodnight, my love.”

Thor kisses the top of her braided hair and retires to his room. A little black cat is sitting on his window sill. He opens the window.

“Did you follow me from Freyr’s house, kitten?” 

It meows at him and pokes his hand with its nose. He laughs and pets it, then carries it to the kitchen and fetches it a bowl of cream, which it attempts to eat as he’s carrying them both back to his room.

He settles the cat and the bowl on the floor and himself into bed and sinks into strange dreams.

When he wakes he forgets them, and he has forgotten the kitten, too, until he sees her little bowl licked clean. 

##  **Seven.**

Thor is impatient to revisit the forest to see if the ividja accepted his little present. Luck favors him today. Freyr needs his help, so Thor decides to be reckless and on his way, he ties Solskinn to a tree at the village border and dashes into the woods. 

He’s surprised when he easily finds the rock where he left the honey. The big jar is still there—or it’s there again—but it is empty with smudge marks all over the glass. Next to it is a makeshift plate of huge sycamore leaves piled high with blackberries. Thor laughs, amused that anything but a bear could consume that much honey in one night. 

He helps himself to a handful of berries and looks around, hoping to see the ividja _._

There’s no sign of it, though, and now he has to hurry to his uncle’s. He rolls the berries up in the leaves and calls, “Thank you,” as he rushes off.

The day is long and Thor works hard. Eir, the midwife, commissioned a new desk and a cabinet for her medicines, and Thor spends the day with Freyr sawing, sanding, and nailing long planks to begin framing them. Though his muscles are pushed to a pleasing burn and sweat rolls off his brow, the work is simple and his mind is far away in the cool shadows of the Ironwood. 

His mind conjures the leaf patterns on the skin of the ividja, and he longs again to touch. He imagines small, pretty lips sticky and shining with honey, and he has to shake himself out of the fantasies lest he hammer a thumb or saw into a finger. Twice Freyr has to nudge him when Thor hasn’t heard his uncle call his name.

At the end of the long day, Thor is worried by his obsession. He drives the mare directly through town to avoid the temptation of the forest. When he passes The Bridge, he sees Sif shooing a young man out of the tavern. He says something indistinct to her with a foul look on his face, and she punches him square on the nose. He curses at her but turns to leave.

When she catches sight of Thor she smiles cheerfully and yells, “Come have a drink with me!”

He declines, pleading a tired and aching body, but promises to see her soon. She looks disappointed and he feels a little stab of guilt but truly, he does need to rest.

He feels as if he’ll be asleep and dreaming the moment his head touches his pillow, until he is actually in his bed.

*

Thor lies awake, aware of every tiny sound in the quiet night. Every sigh of the wind becomes the uncanny language of the ividja, and he closes his eyes again and again to find them open and seeking the trajectory of the moon as it sails through the clear, star-jeweled sky. 

When he can bear it no longer, he dresses and slips into the soft skin boots he wears indoors in the winter. He steals out through his window rather than risk the door, though he feels a fool, and creeps behind the barn and winds his way through the cherry trees and past the old stone post of the fence. 

The moon is full now, a white-gold fruit hanging high and proud amongst the stars.

With its light at his back, he can’t make out the carvings on the stones. His own shadow is in his way.

He walks straight into the forest, drawn by an unbearable need to see the creature again. He wonders if the moonlight will cast the same illusion on its skin as the sun, though he thinks that it will not. 

He doesn’t walk parallel to the village’s border this time; he heads inward, straight into the depths of the Ironwood. 

The edge of the wood is silent, as eerie a threshold as ever, and crossing it is like opening a thick oaken door. When the moon-bright evening is eclipsed by tree cover, the quiet is shattered by a screeching owl tearing out of a tree high above him in a dazzling confusion of striped feathers. Its call is answered by the skittering and chirping calls of other animals of the forest.

In the near distance he hears the howl of a wolf and a shiver runs down his spine. The hair on his arms stands up with the animal memory of being prey, as if he has fur enough on his naked human body to puff up and present himself as a threat.

Undeterred, Thor walks on, and in a small secret part of him he wonders if the wolf is the Angrboda and it’s on its way to meet him in the dark. 

He walks on for what seems only a little way, but when he looks behind him, the forest has swallowed him up. He can no longer see the clearing between the woods and the village, or the standing stones where a fence used to stand. He’s confused, unsure how long he’s been in the forest, and when he looks to the stars to assure himself that at least he’s still moving north, all he can see is the thick canopy overhead of entwining shades of deepest greens.

He is awed by the variety of color he can see in such little light. Perhaps he’d never let his eyes grow so used to the dark before now. His head is tipped back in wonder and a smile is on his lips, when he feels something brush his hand.

He turns and there are the bright, shining eyes of the ividja _._ Thor’s mouth opens on a soft gasp. 

It is so close. Its eyes are wide, and so beautiful. Their light is a gentle glow, the haunting light of the aurorae low to the earth. Its thin chest rises and falls in a fast rhythm. Thor thinks again of a frightened deer.

Slowly, Thor reaches out, his palm up, as he had done before. The creature gives him a wary look, then looks at Thor’s hand as if Thor’s failure to touch it before had caused some offense. Thor steps in, closing the space between them. 

Its face is thin and sharply angled, but there is a soft delicacy there, too. The eyes are set deep beneath rounded lids and full dark brows, the nose is shapely and proud. Thor could weep at the perfection of the tiny petal mouth and the pouting, hairless chin.

He raises his hand and traces the curve of its cheek, and breathes, “What are you, that you are so strange and lovely?”

It blinks, slowly. It says nothing, only looks at Thor as if confused but fascinated by his speech. It pushes against his hand, though. Thor smiles and laughs gently.

“Do you like being petted, darling thing?” he murmurs. 

He reaches tentatively for the root of the branching horns and it tilts its head for him, allowing him to gently trace their pretty curves.

He smooths his rough thumbs over the high cheekbones and strokes a soft curl of hair. Its eyes flutter closed and it sighs. He curls one hand at the nape of its neck and it makes a soft, purring hum. 

Thor would happily stand here and rub its sweet face forever to hear more of that. The beautiful thing has him aching to kiss, to touch it more, to touch it everywhere to make it sigh and push against him like that, to part its sweet lips for him.

He doesn’t know if it would understand. He thinks it wants... but he isn’t sure.

It pulls back and opens its eyes, and the look on its face is openly needy. It points one long finger at its own lips and Thor draws it to him, kissing that small, precious mouth. It is soft as a rose petal and Thor smells lavender on its breath.

The ividja pulls away and pants, staring into Thor’s eyes again, searchingly, and its lids are heavy and Thor sees intelligence there he had not seen before. He has scarcely noticed before the thing throws itself back into the kiss, opening its mouth and Thor is lost in the feel of a wet, velvety tongue sliding against his. He tastes honey.

The creature’s long, clever fingers caress Thor’s neck and throat, and Thor moans helplessly into its mouth. 

When he breaks the kiss, the creature smiles, and its eyes look fierce now. 

It says “Mine.”

##  **Eight.**

Thor gasps, "What?"

It breathes heavily, gusts of lavender-and-honey scented air against Thor's lips. He pulls back but it has him tight in its grip.

It laughs, throaty and musical. "Thank you for your gifts." 

"I—" Thor begins, but he is struck quite speechless. 

The ividja combs its fingers through Thor’s hair. “You left me sweetness to eat, and now you’ve given me your tongue that we may speak. I would have more.” It trails its hands down Thor’s bare arms, teases its fingers under the hem of his short sleeves.

Thor backs away, nearly tripping over a fallen branch.

“But how? Why are you only speaking now?” Thor asks, frightened and confused but still desperately aroused, hard and aching in his trousers. 

The ividja shrugs. “You gave me your tongue,” 

“Who… what are you?” Thor asks, trying to think despite the beautiful body touching his. “Are you the Angrboda?”

Anger flashes across its face, but then it pouts, a deep furrow appearing between its brows. Sadness is unspeakably lovely on its face. “That is not my name.”

“I—I must go,” Thor says. “I am sorry.”

The ividja shrugs. “I will see you again.”

Thor shudders. 

The ividja turns, impossibly graceful, and strides away into the inky shadows. Thor watches, heart hammering in his throat, for a long time before he turns to go home.

Crossing the boundary of the village does not settle him as it used to.

##  **Nine.**

When Thor wakes in the morning, he expects to see sunlight streaming through trees over his head, and is surprised to find his own room instead.

The cat staring into his face with an accusatory look is all too expected of course, and he scoops her up and goes to find them both something to eat.

*

Thor forgets himself often as he moves through his day, thinking to begin a task to find he’s already done it, or staring into the distance dreaming until the hungry goats butt him and shake him from his reveries.

He is thinking of lips that taste of honey and lavender, and telling himself that it isn’t so frightening that the ividja learned to speak with a kiss. A kiss carries all manner of magic in folk tales. And what if it called Thor, “mine?” Had Thor not himself begun to think of the creature as something between a friend and a pet? 

He is still thinking of the taste of honey as he mucks the stables, as he tosses feed for the chickens, as he milks the goats, as he nods as through listening to conversations. He’s longing for the feel of velvety skin and petal-smooth lips and somehow he finds himself standing in the kitchen holding a towel and his mother is swearing at him, and he looks down to see he hasn’t noticed a dish slip from his hands and break upon the floor.

Peevishly, he sweeps up the shattered plate and she ushers him off to bed, telling him he hasn’t been himself all day long. 

*

Thor waits until the house is still and quiet, and once again climbs out of his window, stealing away to the forest under the light of the bright moon and stars, the cat he’s now thinking of as his second, smaller shadow, scampering along at his side.

When Thor comes to the stone pillar of the fence, he has a funny idea that the swirls are almost readable.

He crosses the threshold and the forest comes alive to his ears. He listens to the scurrying, chittering animals low to the ground and the swooshing of feathered creatures above him and slowly spins in place, searching the dark for the ividja.

Cool, soft hands slip onto his shoulders and turn him.

“I’m here,” it says, a smile teasing at the small sweet lips.

Thor surges forward into a desperate kiss, tangling his hands in thick black curls and grunting as honey floods his mouth with a hot, demanding tongue.

Thor breaks the kiss only to catch his breath and stare with helpless affection at the creature. “You are so beautiful,” he says, resting his forehead against the ividja’s. “What can I call you?” 

“Not yet,” the dear thing murmurs, lips warm against Thor’s ear. It kisses his neck and his jaw, and Thor takes it by its small waist, skitters his fingers over the ridges of the ribcage and thumbing its nipples. It arches and whines.

“Are you a man? Are you a monster?” Thor asks, mouthing its elegant shoulders and feeling the heart beating so fast and strange beneath his palms.

It shrugs, and then takes Thor’s palm and presses it between its legs. “You may call me a man. Or a monster. What difference?” There is a note of bitterness. “Are men not monsters?”

It—he, then, if he says so—has a large cock hanging free beneath the swatch of fur. Thor strokes the length of it and kisses him gently, as if he can soothe whatever pain men have inflicted on this alluring soul.

The ividja pants and unties the lace of his skirt, and Thor takes that long, weighty cock in his hand and strokes it, feels it thicken in his palm. The creature makes its odd rustling, purring sound of pleasure and kisses him again and again. 

A light sheen of sweat appears on the ividja’s forehead and Thor kisses it away. He tastes honey here, too.

The ividja reaches for the laces on Thor’s breeches and struggles to untie them, so Thor undoes them and shoves them to the ground. He pulls off his tunic as well, and he shivers, not from cold but with a wracking thrill of anticipation.

He pushes his body flush against the ividja, pressing his wanting cock into its hip. It ruts against him and pants harshly, and Thor feels blunt teeth scrape against his neck and shoulders. 

It whines softly, and speeds up its rhythm, and Thor takes its plump bottom in his hands and pulls it more tightly against him. His own cock is trapped against its hip and leaking, and he’s moving in a wonderful slide. 

“Give me your name,” it pants. 

“Thor,” he says, breathless, “I am Thor.” 

“Yes,” the creature hisses. “Say it again, again.

Thor arches at this, his hips driving hard, then he dips his head to drink from the ividja’s beautiful lips. “I’m Thor,” he says, and it groans. 

Thor begs, “Will you tell me yours now?”

The ividja meets his gaze, eyes glowing fiercely, and it says, “Loki.”

His name is Loki.

Thor closes his eyes and surges against Loki’s body, letting his tongue swipe into Loki’s mouth and exhaling into his gasping lungs. “Loki, Loki.”

Thor spills in a hot gush against Loki’s groin, and Loki follows after, his spend sticky and sweet between them. Thor, curious, swipes a finger against the head of Loki’s softening cock and raises it to his lips.

Honey. 

Loki draws Thor down to the forest floor where a soft bed of moss and grass cushions them. They lie together entwined for some time, and when Thor wakes, he thinks he remembers being somewhere else away from the forest, like a dream he can’t quite remember. 

He sits up in the waking forest and sees his discarded clothing near where he and Loki slept. He begins to remember a little now. When he picks up the breeches and the tunic and dresses himself, he remembers a fence that is not a fence and a cottage. 

He looks down at Loki, curled in on himself, his green skin keeping him nearly hidden as he sleeps deeply in a shaft of sunlight peeking through the elms.

##  **Ten.**

He stumbles home, dazed and disoriented. 

When he steps across the fence, he feels as though he has left something of himself behind in the woods.

He walks a path his feet remember more than his head, and ends up at the cottage, and thinks, “I live here with... Mother and Father.” But he feels like he is in a dream.

He walks inside and his mother looks at him as if she’s astonished to see him. Confusion is written on her face, but then she blinks and says, “Oh, yes… son,” and smiles, a bit forced.

There is something he does now, usually. Something familiar—ah, yes. He leans in to kiss her cheek and she stiffens before she pats his cheek and nods.

“I don’t feel well. I’m going to rest if it’s all right, Mother.”

“Of course... um, son. Go have a lie down. You don’t look well. Odin will take care of the animals.”

He pauses, confused for a moment about where to go, then goes to the room where he sleeps and lies down on the bed. It feels too soft and he rolls about before he feels comfortable. When he is almost asleep, he feels a soft thud, and turns over to find a small, angry black cat staring at him balefully.

He reaches to pet her and she meows angrily.

“Argh, let me sleep, kitty,” he says, pulling his pillow over his face.

The cat bites his fingers.

He tries to pick her up to put her out the window, and she slashes at him with tiny, vicious claws, yowling like he’s torturing her. She climbs up his arms and clings to his shoulder.

Giving up on rest, he walks out to the garden, the cat perched happily on his shoulder. She hops off onto the ground and stalks off in the direction of the tumbling rock fence post.

She stops every few feet and looks back at him as if impatient for him to follow. He feels a strange compulsion to go with her, as if this is what he should be doing and not staying inside the cottage, inside the fence.

He’s near the barn and hears his father talking softly to the goats and horses.

He goes to the door of the barn and says, deciding as the words leave his mouth, “I’m going into the Ironwood.”

His father glances up absently, and looks at him as if he’s never seen him before. He says, “Ah, very well then.” 

He stops at the skeps up the slope and gently overturns them so the bees can stay or go as they will, and opens the new box hives. The top boxes of each have fresh, dripping honeycombs already, so he takes a shelf and loads all of the honeycomb into it.

As he walks, he gathers all the flowers he can find and piles them on top of the box and carries his overflowing gift across the threshold into the forest, the little cat weaving around and between his legs in a constant swirl of movement.

*

Thor steps between two trees that arch toward each other at the forest’s edge like a gate. A thick oak and a pale silvery birch. He sees the stone where he’d left Loki’s offerings. He places the honey and flowers here again. The cat purrs and nudges his leg then slinks away deep into the woods.

She leads Thor to the clearing where he’d lain with Loki, and he sits down to wait, stroking her spine and rubbing her soft velvet ears. After a while, he sleeps.

When he wakes his lover is at his side. He turns to Loki and they kiss long and slow, then go to the mossy rock to eat. 

Thor picks petals off a foxglove and pushes them into Loki’s mouth, and Loki makes a happy hum. He pulls apart a rose and Thor opens his mouth, taking a petal onto his tongue. 

It dissolves, and he swallows its sweetness along with the knowledge of how to sigh like the wind skimming over a rose bush and how to bite like the sting of a thorn. 

They dip their hands into honey and suck it from each other’s fingers, stuffing each other’s mouths and licking drips and spills from chins and cheeks.

Bellies filled, they return to their bed of moss and leaves and make love. Loki presses his tongue and fingers into Thor and pulls up his legs and takes him with his legs spread wide and Loki leaning over him, raining honey kisses over his mouth and face, his breast and his shoulders.

Loki quakes and shudders and comes into Thor in a rush of warmth and Thor smells clover and lavender, primrose and lily of the valley. 

Loki moves within him still, pressing again and again on the sweet spot of pleasure and stroking Thor’s cock in a tight fist. 

Soon Thor’s body goes taut and he arches, spilling on his belly and Loki’s in a rich, golden stream of honey. Loki eases himself down to rest on Thor’s chest, and swipes his hand through Thor’s honey-spend. 

He feeds it to them in turns and then bends to lick Thor’s belly clean.

They lounge on the forest floor, and Thor dozes a while until an ache at his temples wakes him. Loki soothes him with brambleberries and clover and Thor learns to shriek like the sound of an oak torn apart by lightning strike as horns curl out from him like a ram. 

After, Loki uses his clever hands to hold Thor by these thick horns and thrust into his mouth, spilling down his throat as Thor purrs and growls.

They sleep then, wrapped around each other, limbs entwined. A breeze parts the leaves of the trees and sunshine falls upon their bodies. Their skins are green and leaf-curled. They are barely distinguishable from the leaves and moss of their bed. 

They are as bound together as vines, and they are wed to the wood.

* * *

##  **Epilogue.**

The village of Innangard has grown over the years. As a hive grows by accretion, more buildings pop up and the village spreads and grows dense. It is becoming a town. 

The townsfolk are proud of their neat little home, with its thriving market where the beekeepers and mead brewers sell jars and casks to a bustling crowd. Their skills have been passed along the generations of workers and the town is becoming famous for its wares.

Some time ago, the villagers rebuilt the fence. It now has two gates. One opens toward the long wide road that winds south toward the nearest city. The second is to the north. It is small and all of the stones with carvings were taken to build a tall, reaching archway. Beyond the gate is a natural arch of two tall old trees that grow together at the tops, an elm and a birch, their trunks twisting into one and other as they reach toward the sky.

Beyond the gate and beyond the trees is a wide flat stone, covered in lush green moss. Whenever the moon is full as a ripe, round peach, a daring young villager carries a basket piled high with honeycomb and berries and flowers and leaves it on the stone.

The townspeople all laugh at themselves for the silly tradition, but they grew up hearing stories of the ividjur, and that once long ago the people of Innangard feared the wood-wives, but then they learned to leave them gifts and their town prospered.

They feel like moon-sick fools, but they leave their offerings. The stories say that as long as the Ironwood is fed on honey and sweet gifts, Innangard will know no sorrow.


End file.
